A little more than a year after another hurricane decimated the hamlet, residents returned to their coastal community on Friday morning to discover their cherished shops destroyed, homes swept away, and roads inundated.
With winds reaching a maximum sustained speed of 140 mph, Hurricane Helene devastated and shook the 500-person village the day before.
As she assessed the damage outside her home on Friday, Susan Grant, 63, said, “Every storm that we’ve had, it just keeps getting worse and worse.”
Although her house was still intact, the interior was inundated, destroying her furnishings and carrying away the front staircase, as the surging waves from Helene’s storm surge overflowed the 14-foot stilts it is raised on.
She was grateful that she still had her house to return to, but Crabbie Dad’s Bar & Grill, a beloved local icon and her lifelong employer, had been completely destroyed.
Standing outside her house, Grant, 63, declared, “The whole building’s gone.”
The Category 4 storm that ripped through the Southeast left millions without power and at least 42 dead across the region.
With powerful winds, a lot of rain, and “life-threatening” circumstances, Helene weakened into a tropical depression on Friday and was moving north, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Some of the flooded roads in Steinhatchee, Florida’s hard-hit Big Bend region, were inaccessible, and others were coated in thick layers of mud, tree branches, and debris.
While some docks and houses were flooded, others were washed away. According to Grant, her shed collapsed and was carried across her land. Close by, two docks’ worth of debris partially blocked and peeled the pavement off a road that was damaged during Hurricane Idalia last year.
“It’s devastating,” Grant stated. “People, they’ve worked around here a lot, and it’s just sad. It’s sad that we’ve had to endure this much in one year.”
After the wave receded on Friday, layers of branches, seaweed, and other plant debris were left behind, making the pavement in front of Gary Keen’s home completely unrecognizable. Huge logs, a few inches in height, extended over several yards on his land.
In order to get past coolers, plywood fragments, and a sign from a company “that didn’t come from anywhere near here,” Keen and his family had to create a tiny passage.
Even though he lost running water and power and part of his home flooded, Keen was glad that his house held up better than others he had seen.
Read Also: Fleeing the Storm: Georgia, Florida Residents Evacuate Before Helene Hits
The inability of many locals to obtain flood insurance has made their situation even worse because it prevents them from having the funds to begin rebuilding or repairing their homes.
Docks along the Steinhatchee River were demolished, and the well-known Roy’s restaurant fell, sending angular wooden pillars toppling over one another.
Along with tree branches, concrete cinderblocks and restaurant debris such as pots and pans, wine bottles, and table knives and spoons were scattered across the road.
First Baptist Church Steinhatchee associate pastor Ron Bloom described it as “heartbreaking” to witness areas that had been renovated as part of Hurricane Idalia’s recovery efforts lying in ruins.
